AFKLocker 0.4.0

The release that makes AFKLocker safe to hand to someone else: it can now tell you what it can and cannot do on your machine, and it can no longer half-configure itself.

New: Diagnostics

AFKLocker Setup → Diagnostics runs a self-test and reports what this machine can actually do — whether Windows reports a lid, whether the power settings allow closed-lid operation, whether the watcher really works here, and whether the saved configuration matches reality.

Two optional tests, because they touch the running system:

• Test lid detection — asks you to close and open the lid, and reports what Windows delivered. It never locks your session. It only listens.
• Test the watcher — starts one, confirms the handshake, stops it, and puts the previous state back. If automatic mode was on, it stays on.

Export diagnostics writes a zip you can attach to an issue: a summary a person can read, JSON for tooling, and the check-by-check output.

No telemetry, no server, no account. Nothing is sent anywhere, ever. The file is written where you choose and it is yours to read first.

The bundle deliberately excludes your username, computer name, IP and MAC addresses, Wi-Fi networks, files, installed programs, processes and environment variables. Paths become placeholders like %LOCALAPPDATA%, and a path outside the known folders is reduced to just its file name. A custom power plan's name is never reported — only that it is custom. Manufacturer and model are opt-in, off by default.

Turning automatic mode on can no longer half-apply

Enabling touches three things — the saved mode, the sign-in entry, the running process — and any of them can fail. A failure now unwinds the steps before it, so you get exactly one of two outcomes: automatic and genuinely working, or manual and clean. Never something in between.

If a rollback cannot finish, it says so and lists what it could not undo, instead of reporting success.

A running watcher is no longer assumed to be a working one

The watcher now signals READY only after Windows has actually accepted the lid registration — not merely when the process starts. Enabling waits for that signal, so a watcher that could never receive lid events fails the enable and is rolled back, instead of sitting there looking healthy while nothing happens.

Setup now reports four states rather than a yes/no, and repairs drift when it opens: a watcher killed in Task Manager, a startup entry removed by a cleanup tool, a stale signal from a crash.

Fixed

With an external monitor, closing the lid left the lock screen lit. Closing the lid makes Windows reconfigure the displays, which wakes the external screen — a lid can't turn that off. In automatic mode AFKLocker now turns the displays off right after locking.

Verifying this download

There is no code signing certificate — that is a recurring cost this project does not have, so SmartScreen will warn on first run. But you do not have to take the download on trust:

# Proves these exact bytes came from this repository's release workflow
gh attestation verify AFKLocker-0.4.0-setup.exe --repo augbastos/AFKLocker

Or check the hash against SHA256SUMS.txt below. Both are free, and the attestation answers something a certificate does not: which workflow run and commit produced this file.

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Still physically tested on one machine. Everything else is covered by 137 tests against simulated ones — which is exactly why the diagnostics bundle exists: if it does not work on yours, you can tell me why in one file.